


ready? let's roll

by graveExcitement (arachnids)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2153592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnids/pseuds/graveExcitement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when the <i>Enterprise</i> is trying to relax after a stressful mission, reality starts warping in strange and dangerous ways.</p>
<p>At three in the morning.</p>
<p>Bones is not pleased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ready? let's roll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eugenides (newamsterdam)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newamsterdam/gifts).



"Quick question, Bones."

Bones groaned in the general direction of the criminally bright screen from where he lay tangled in his sheets. "You woke me up at -" he blearily checked the time - "0300 just for a 'quick question'? Dammit, Jim..."

"It's a very quick question, I swear."

"Then why couldn't it wait till morning?" he groused. "Fine, just - get on with it."

"Great," said Jim. "Okay, here we go: can humans spontaneously become double-jointed?"

"The hell do you mean, 'spontaneously'?" Bones craned his head upwards to squint at the screen. "Did you dislocate something?"

" _No_ , Bones. Look, I just woke up and now my elbow, it - are you even listening?"

"Give me a god damned moment, Jim." Quietly swearing, he managed to untangle himself from his sheets, rub the sleep from his eyes, sit up. Finally, he gave the screen before him a good glare. "Your elbow?" he prompted.

"Yeah," said Jim. "Check this out." He held his left arm out before the camera, bent it, straightened it out - and then proceeded to bend it the opposite way, folding his left arm back on itself. "Oh, and before you say anything: I woke up like this. Totally not my fault."

"Jesus Christ," muttered Bones, unable to tear his gaze away from Jim's arm.

"Right, okay," Jim said. "So: spontaneous double-jointedness?"

Bones scowled, returning his full attention to the situation at hand. "No. It's impossible to suddenly develop hyper-mobility without injury. You couldn't do this before?"

"No!"

"Then get your ass down to Medical."

"Do I have to? It doesn't even hurt or anything."

"Don't be such a child," Bones snapped. "I'll meet you there."

Jim sighed, a full-blown dramatic sigh that had Bones rolling his eyes in irritation, before signing off. Bones took it as a victory.

-

After having hurriedly thrown on clothes and given the coffee machine a longing glance, Bones opened the door to his quarters - only to be met with a nightmare. His door opened out into the cold, deadly vacuum of space, and Bones stopped breathing. Then, after only a fraction of a second had passed, the gaping void before him surrendered itself to the reality of the stark white corridor that, before now, had always reliably existed when he opened his door.

Shaken, Bones blinked several times, heart thudding in his chest, fighting the urge to step back and slam the door shut. But Jim needed him, so instead he stepped forward and calmly shut the door behind him. 

The hallway, despite his fears, continued to exist, and Bones decided the bizarre vision of space must be the result of sleep-deprivation. Silently, he cursed Jim for having woken up with sudden hyper-mobility at three, instead of at a normal, decent hour. His only consolation was that since it was, in fact, not a decent hour, no one else had been in the hallway to see his sleep-deprived moment of terror.

If he chose, Bones could also be grateful for the little fact that by now, the _Enterprise_ was far from Qynt, the site of their most recent mission. In fact, the away mission on Qynt was the true cause of his sleep deprivation, not the few hours Jim had robbed him of by waking him at 0300 hours. However, Bones did not often take it into his mind to be grateful, so instead he stormed his way down to medical.

The first words Bones heard upon stepping out of the turbolift were "Look, I'm just waiting for Bones, alright?"

"Doctor McCoy is off-shift," snapped Bones' esteemed colleague, Christine Chapel. "He's getting well-deserved rest, after that civil war fiasco on Qynt - as _you_ should be doing, Captain."

"You know, generally - oh hey, Bones is here! And... upside-down! Now that's an entrance."

"I'm not upside-down, you're upside-down. Speaking of which: what the hell?" Bones glared at Jim, who was definitely standing on the ceiling. As was everyone else in the room.

Jim scanned around the room. "Nnnnope, I'm definitely on the floor here. You know, with all the chairs and beds and such. You're up there with the lights, a place we usually call 'the ceiling.'" Bones scanned the room and scowled: he was right.

"What," said one of the on-duty doctors. Chapel remained speechless.

"This doesn't make any sense," said Bones. "I definitely wasn't upside-down when I got on the turbolift."

"You sure?" Jim asked.

"I think I would have noticed, dammit!"

"Okay," said Jim. "You know, this actually clears things up."

Bones gave him a flat stare, the effectiveness of which was no doubt decreased by his upside-down condition. "Does it now?"

"On the way here, my foot got stuck inside the floor. And by that I mean I took a step forward and suddenly my foot was ankle deep in the floor itself. The floor wasn't broken, by the way. It had just swallowed up my foot out of nowhere. Then I blinked and both of my feet were on the floor again, instead of in it. Now," Jim said, "I assumed that it was a hallucination, or that I was drunk. But now you're upside-down - not to mention that my elbow bends backwards, so now I think the foot thing must have been real."

For a moment, Bones remained quiet. "When I opened my door, for a second instead of my hallway I saw the depths of space. Do you think..."

Jim met Bones' gaze (a task harder than expected when one party was upside-down) and grimaced. "I really don't like what that means for my ship's structural integrity. Kirk to bridge!"

"Captain," came the prompt response. "I had thought you intended to 'sleep for a day?'"

"That was before inexplicable and possibly dangerous phenomena started happening to my ship, Spock. Has anything happened up there?"

"Indeed. The upper levels have become a fascinating example of non-Euclidian geometry. I had intended to give Lieutenant Sulu the conn, as scheduled, and return to my quarters, but no matter the path I took, I always found that I had made my way to the bridge once more."

"Huh. Well, earlier my foot became briefly lodged inside the floor and Bones opened a door and saw only the vacuum of space instead of a hallway, and just a few minutes ago he opened a door and walked on the ceiling. You know, Bones, maybe you should stop opening doors?"

"I hardly thing opening _doors_ is causing problems," Bones all but snarled.

"Oh yeah, and I can bend my elbow backwards," added Jim. "You get all that, Spock?"

"...Affirmative," said Spock. "Based on the non-Euclidian geometry and Doctor McCoy's encounter with outer space, it seems clear that whatever is affecting the Enterprise has the power to bend reality."

"Well that's just peachy," groused Bones.

Jim was no longer paying attention, however: instead, he frowned at the eerily silent Chapel. "Hey," he said, quietly. "Nurse Chapel, are you okay?"

Chapel did not respond, or even move. Neither did anyone else in the room, save Jim and Bones. Warily, Jim tried to move Chapel, perhaps help her sit down, but she didn't budge an inch. Neither did any of the other on-duty doctors. Bones swore.

Sighing, Jim commed the bridge again. "Status report," he said. "Everyone in the med bay seems to be... frozen. Not literally, but sort of stuck in place."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone but me and Bones," Jim affirmed. "He _is_ still stuck on the ceiling, but aside from that, he's not stuck."

"You should remove yourself from the area, Captain," said Spock, "lest the two of you become similarly afflicted."

"Sounds good to me. Should we meet you at the bridge?"

"Negative. If you were to arrive at the bridge, chances are high that you would not be able to leave again until this issue is solved - and so far there are no indicators that the bending of reality has an outside source."

"Gotcha," said Jim. "Okay, so how about instead of that, we -" He cut himself off as the communicator began producing an inordinate amount of static, before disappearing entirely. In its place was...

"Is that a _tongue?_ " 

Jim shuddered, backing away from the tongue in question. Around the room, other communicators also turned into tongues. "Time to go," he announced.

"I'm with you there," said Bones. They both stepped into the turbolift, and both were less than surprised when, in the blink of an eye, Bones went from upside-down to right-side-up. Jim just sighed.

The turbolift claimed to be stopping at level four, but based on the signage that greeted them when the doors opened, the turbolift wasn't exactly reliable. What grabbed Bones' attention, however, was the electricity crackling up and down the walls, and the way the floor expanded and contracted, the hallway cycling from slim to wide and back again.

"Jim, I don't think we want to be here, either," Bones warned.

"But it's where we need to be," said Jim. "This is where the heaviest... reality malfunctions have been so far. That's a good reason to suspect the source is nearby." When met with Bones' uneasy silence, he added, "Do you have any better ideas?"

"Not exactly."

"Then let's go, before the turbolift eats us or something."

"Fine, but - don't touch the walls."

Jim stepped forward, and Bones hurried to follow, glancing behind to confirm that the turbolift had not grown teeth. It had not, but as Bones watched, the door closed behind them and the turbolift sped away.

"I don't even know why I didn't expect that, by this point," Bones muttered.

"Means the only way is forward," Jim said, striding forth.

Bones followed close behind. "It doesn't mean I like it," he said, glaring at the electrified walls, which continued to swing between 'too close for comfort' and 'extremely far apart.'

"Good thing you don't have to," said Jim, as they continued down the hallway. After a minute, Bones realized he recognized the hallway - it was usually home to a variety of laboratories. Now, however, the doors leading to the different labs were missing - all but the door at the end of the hallway.

"Jim," Bones said, as they reached the door at the end of the hall, "you can't tell me that this doesn't stink of 'trap' to you?"

"Oh, it does. This whole setup is clearly designed to draw us in and not give us any kind of possible exit." Jim gestured behind them, and Bones turned to see the floor melting only a few feet from where they stood. "Also, did you know you've got a third eye?"

"What?" squawked Bones, even as Jim opened the door to the lab and slipped inside. Bones stormed in after him, shouting, "What do you mean I've got a - grrk!" This last was due to his accidentally poking himself in his new third eye, which resided in his forehead.

**Humans.**

The voice resounded in Bones' head, and based on Jim's sudden stiffening, he had heard it too.

At that point, the lights did not so much 'go out' as 'begin dripping a nameless black ooze.' The only remaining source of light was the softly glowing dagger resting on a table in the middle of the room, and the sparks which leaped about on the walls.

"Hey," said Jim, "that's the dagger we found embedded in Ensign Jones' thigh!"

**Indeed.**

"I - is that you? Am I talking to a dagger?"

**Yes.**

Jim turned to look at Bones. "You're hearing this, right?"

" _Yes_ , Jim."

"Just checking. So," he turned to face the dagger, "I assume that you're the one bending reality?"

**You assume correctly.**

"Is there any way I could convince you to stop?"

**I cannot fully control it. I require the assistance of a particular substance.**

"What kind of substance?" Bones demanded.

**Blood.**

"Oh," said Jim. "Hey, I can help with that. Here." Before Bones could protest, Jim strode forward and nicked his thumb on the edge of the dagger, letting some blood fall onto it, before setting it down and stepping back to stand beside Bones.

"Jim, you idiot," hissed Bones, but Jim waved a hand in dismissal.

"It's fine, Bones. See, look! The lights are back!" Indeed, as Jim glanced around to observe, the lights gradually returned to their normal state, and Bones found himself squinting against the bright light. "Hey," said Jim, still watching as the electricity crawling the walls slowed, but didn't quite disappear, "was that all the blood you needed?"

**No.**

Alarmed, Jim swung around to face the dagger, only to find that it was levitating, and flying at him - at his heart. 

In no way did time slow down for Bones, or anything of the sort. He saw the dagger's trajectory and simply knew: _this could not be allowed to happen_. He shoved Jim, idiot Jim, out of the way, and was rewarded with Jim's outraged expression as he fell and a knife to the chest.

"Bones, you - _Bones!_ "

Jim's shouts grew ever-distant, as the world dimmed to black. Before he passed out completely, Bones thought he heard footsteps.

-

When Bones managed to open his eyes, he was greeted with the familiar ceiling of the medical bay. So he had survived. That was... somewhat of a surprise.

"Bones," croaked a voice from his left. Bones looked over, and saw Jim, who looked like he hadn't slept in hours. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

"Just gave you a taste of your own medicine," Bones grumbled. "Maybe now you'll think twice before heroically self-sacrificing yourself."

Jim looked pained. "You nearly died."

"Maybe you haven't noticed, but you nearly die all the time." And it gives me a heart attack every time, he thought.

"No, I mean - at some point the Qyntian dagger's reality warping did weird things to our internal organs. I got another liver, you got another eye - though that disappeared earlier - and another heart. Without that second heart, you'd be dead."

Bones grunted. "What happened to the knife?"

"You..." Jim cleared his throat. "Your blood dampened its powers, and we launched it into the nearest sun."

"Good riddance," said Bones. After a moment of silence, he asked: "Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"Is your elbow still hyper-mobile?"

"What?" Jim asked, thrown. "Oh! Yeah, that never went away. Look!" He then proceeded to display his ability, bending his arm completely backwards. "Speaking of things that never went away: your heart is on the right side of your body. Right about..." he reached across Bones' torso to point at one of his ribs. "Here."

Bones frowned. His lung should be there. "That shouldn't be possible," he muttered.

"Tell that to all the tongues lying around the ship," Jim said, all too cheerfully.

Bones groaned.

"Seriously, Bones," Jim said, and Bones had to look up, because rarely did Jim Kirk ever begin a sentence with 'Seriously.' "This is your only heart left," he continued, splaying his hand across Bones' ribs. "Captain's orders are to take care of it."

Bones laid a hand across Jim's. "I will," he affirmed, "as long as you promise to be - careful is too much to hope for, but how about some common sense? _Idiot._ You knew it was a trap, and you let down your guard!"

Jim had the decency to look slightly abashed, which was all well and good. Bones had a proper tongue-lashing in store for him, and if it was more effective from a bed in the medical bay, that could only work in Bones' favor.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Somebody Told Me, by The Killers.
> 
>  
> 
> _ready? let's roll_  
>  onto something new  
> taking its toll  
> and I'm leaving without you


End file.
